Juno News - December 09, 2022


Journalist compares her work to…performing surgery??


Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

203.39896

Word count

4,536

Sentence count

3

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of Fake News Friday, Andrew Lawton and Harrison Faulkner tackle the idea that journalism is like brain surgery, and that unless you're part of the elite brain surgeon club, you're not even a real journalist.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to you all it is another Friday which means it's another time for fake news
00:00:15.380 Friday which means it's oh no that was it that was all I had yeah it's fake news Friday
00:00:19.700 December 9th 2022 I am Andrew Lawton joined as always or as usual by Harrison Faulkner
00:00:27.840 swimming through that blizzard of lies debunking all that's wrong in the world and hopefully trying
00:00:33.040 to make sense of it and make you laugh did I get the mandate of the show right I think you're pretty
00:00:37.740 close there I have to say usually you usually you team me up with a little how was your week and I
00:00:41.880 was gonna say that my week was great until I just read a Twitter thread Andrew which really shook my
00:00:46.600 confidence as a journalist I started to realize that hey these these Toronto Star journalists
00:00:50.740 these experts over there that take a bit of take a bit of a taxpayer money they have so much confidence
00:00:56.260 and so much pride in their work that they actually equate their journalism Andrew to brain surgery and
00:01:01.480 I mean when when you put it in that sense us lowly journalists at True North how can we possibly
00:01:06.080 compete with the expert brain surgeon journalists over the Toronto Star yeah that is fair enough and
00:01:12.880 a perfect segue into this thread that was written by one Toronto Star journalist by the name of
00:01:19.720 Saba Itazaz now I'm not familiar with Saba's work and I have no idea how good she is as a journalist
00:01:27.020 but it was an odd sort of comparison she made here because she said that imagine someone randomly
00:01:33.220 showing up when you're sick and saying they'll be performing surgery on you without any training
00:01:37.860 accreditations qualifications you're like no way they're like how dare you gatekeep this profession
00:01:43.600 I'm an independent surgeon I see where it's going she continues if someone knows how to merely point
00:01:51.360 scalpels at things and cut them would you let them work on you because mainstream doctors are too elite
00:01:56.920 give the power back to the people they don't need to be trained they just need to be there now apply
00:02:02.720 that to journalism you got it whoa
00:02:05.900 I'm told the people liked it when I did that last time when I get when I flip on sassy mode that's what I'm
00:02:12.980 doing that's an old boss from the past like I can't drop this mic because it's you know wired in
00:02:17.920 there but if I were to drop the mic that would be when I would drop the mic so the point is that
00:02:22.500 journalism is like brain surgery and anyone who says you should support an independent journalist
00:02:28.260 is like saying that you want just some guy that lives under the bridge to do your surgery I don't
00:02:33.760 even quite know the point that she's making like at first I read it and was wondering is she calling
00:02:39.720 for licensing of journalists and then I wondered is she just saying that you have to go to journalism
00:02:44.680 school to be a journalist like I wasn't even quite clear what the point was it just basically
00:02:49.820 sounded to me like she was saying you know what I'm a real journalist anyone outside the club doesn't
00:02:55.080 get to be a part of it well I think that's exactly it Andrew I mean it's not like it's a new it's not
00:02:59.220 like it's a new opinion that this journalist is sharing we hear it constantly that unless you work
00:03:03.520 for one of the big mainstream outlets one of the outlets in Canada that you know takes a bunch of
00:03:07.560 cash from the government which is usually a sign that you're not really objective but nonetheless
00:03:11.820 that's what Toronto Star is doing so that's usually what they're saying they're saying that really
00:03:15.580 unless you work for one of unless you work with us unless you're part of our club well then frankly
00:03:20.240 you're not even a real journalist and we can look we can look at all these other examples but just this
00:03:24.260 week we can even we can even tie this into what happened to Blacklock's reporter the independent
00:03:28.440 outlet at the parliamentary press gallery they were they were kicked out of the parliamentary press
00:03:32.680 gallery because what one of the journalists was supposedly not wearing earphones in the uh in
00:03:37.820 the parliamentary office I think it was it was it was deeper than that of course they don't take
00:03:42.000 money from the government and the rest of them do and that's sort of this whole this whole idea that
00:03:47.340 there's a club there's a little club and you're not in it unless you work for one of these outlets and
00:03:51.580 I mean take a look at this it's it doesn't even really I don't know it doesn't even take very much
00:03:56.940 pretty much analysis unless you unless you are part of their club you're not you're not really a real
00:04:03.000 journalist all of these outlets that do take money from the government all these journalists that do
00:04:06.780 work for these outlets all pretty much write the same exact thing they all have the exact same narrative
00:04:10.720 and that's exactly what they're going for here they are basically saying that unless you went to
00:04:14.860 journalism school unless you are a part of our club you're not a real journalist so Susan Thompson this
00:04:19.720 woman on Twitter uh responded back and just said so am I not a reporter because I started stringing with
00:04:24.180 only an English degree we have editors you know and of course then she responded back and said well
00:04:29.340 there you go you have a vetting system in place I find this hilarious since I'm a refugee journalist
00:04:34.360 not even from here and don't have a western jay school degree or any privilege this tweet is not what
00:04:39.840 you think it is so uh again it's all it's all part of this sort of backtracking she ended up deleting
00:04:44.480 the tweet because I think she realized how insane it was Andrew but even when she faced backtrack even
00:04:49.460 even when she faced criticism sorry she couldn't really hold up her argument and she's saying well
00:04:53.600 she has no privilege she doesn't have a western jay school degree she just works for the toronto star
00:04:58.080 very strange yeah there was another tweet in that exchange though that I found even more amusing
00:05:03.720 because the person says to her well your point wasn't really clear and she said that it's good
00:05:10.460 enough to serve me fine I don't follow a colonial syntax and I don't need to cheers so that's basically
00:05:18.800 like your cover letter for a toronto star job you use a phrase like colonial syntax and you are
00:05:24.920 absolutely in the clear and I have to bring this up because there's this new thing going around you
00:05:30.600 may have seen online it's called chat gps and it's basically this open ai service that you can use and
00:05:37.800 it's a free sort of beta trial thing if you find it really creepy I get it ai stuff is very weird and you
00:05:44.520 can actually give this little bot a prompt and ask it to do something for you you could have a
00:05:50.280 conversation with it you could ask it to write something for you I was playing around one night
00:05:54.740 when I couldn't sleep and I said this I gave the prompt this exact thing this is not a word of a lie
00:06:00.200 I said please write me a toronto star column about how power tools are racist and I'm like I don't know
00:06:07.300 this thing's not going to work it's not going to give me anything lo and behold it gave me one two three
00:06:12.600 four five six seven eight paragraphs that I think you could copy and paste and put into the toronto
00:06:19.400 star I won't read the whole thing you can see it up on the screen there the lead it may seem strange
00:06:25.400 to suggest that power tools inanimate objects used for construction and repairs could have any connection
00:06:30.600 to racism however when we examine the history and current use of these tools a pattern emerges that
00:06:37.640 reveals their inherent bias and discrimination you skip forward ahead it makes the case very well
00:06:44.040 and then at the end of it in conclusion power tools may appear to be neutral objects but the history and
00:06:49.720 current use of these tools reveal a pattern of bias and discrimination from their association with
00:06:55.720 traditional gender roles and whiteness to the potential negative effects on marginalized workers it's clear
00:07:01.880 that power tools are not as neutral as they may seem it's important for us to recognize and address
00:07:07.560 these biases in order to create a more equitable and inclusive society did I just result in a
00:07:13.960 toronto star reporter getting laid off because that to me seems just perfect it's perfect Andrew it's
00:07:19.240 free of all colonial syntax and it's right on the money that's really that's really what I think is
00:07:23.880 going on here this this AI bot that's almost scary it's scary how accurate that is it's incredible
00:07:30.120 um you know I I hope that uh you never know though because because if it didn't go to if it didn't go
00:07:34.680 to J school Andrew it's maybe not even part of the club I mean maybe we have to uh maybe we should
00:07:39.480 bring in the AI bot as and publish it as uh as sort of like a joke column in true north as as basically
00:07:46.120 like the most absurd take you could ever have because really that's brilliant that's hilarious stuff yeah I
00:07:51.960 won't read it because it wasn't exactly pg but I did another one later I asked it to write me a love
00:07:56.280 story between a twitter doctor and a mask and it got uh it got very erotic there so uh we that one's
00:08:03.080 for the after hours edition of the program uh I'm gonna like this AI writing stuff is supposed to save
00:08:09.640 time but I think I'm just wasting time because all day now I'm just going to be putting in these
00:08:13.160 these different prompts here uh let's talk about a walking talking AI machine actually no I don't think
00:08:18.680 there's any I which is you know intelligence uh but uh this is from Jagmeet Singh who has said that
00:08:26.200 he is confronting the genocide that is taking place in Canada what's he going on about Harrison
00:08:33.800 so uh what was it on Monday or Sunday Jagmeet Singh quote tweeted an MP and he wrote this white supremacy
00:08:41.160 misogyny race and racism continue to contribute to this ongoing genocide of MMIWG2S uh and we must
00:08:51.080 confront it Andrew so the MMIWG missing and murdered indigenous women and girls um that is under the
00:08:58.600 you know in the eyes of Jagmeet Singh in the eyes of some uh you know even Justin Trudeau that is
00:09:03.320 supposed to be a genocide in Canada right now uh and he tacks on the two spirit uh to the end of that which
00:09:09.960 I wasn't aware of I didn't know that actually the there was a genocide uh being perpetrated by white
00:09:14.840 supremacists against two-spirited indigenous women and girls but nonetheless apparently Jagmeet Singh
00:09:20.520 thinks it is um but yes anyway so he writes this tweet basically saying Andrew that the government
00:09:27.800 that you know he is propping up as uh as a part of his coalition is contributing to genocide which is
00:09:34.440 a very strange accusation to make you're you're basically making that accusation against yourself too in a
00:09:39.320 way uh he's talking about what took place in he's talking about basically the murder of three women
00:09:45.960 indigenous women um and actually it's four one woman has yet to be identified by a serial killer
00:09:50.760 in Winnipeg now that is supposed to be a genocide and he jumps at the opportunity to say it's a white
00:09:56.760 supremacy it's misogyny it's racism and we must confront this genocide and we got some great replies
00:10:02.120 and he got absolutely crushed in the comments Andrew he was the winner of the ratio of the week award the
00:10:07.160 the prize ratio of the week award on ratioed uh and take a look at this so Jonathan Kaye commented
00:10:12.920 this he says there's an ongoing genocide being conducted by the Canadian government the same
00:10:17.240 government that's been in power for seven years which you and the NDP are now propping up as
00:10:21.240 accessories to genocide what are you and your whole genocide air caucus going to turn yourself into the
00:10:26.280 hague which is a funny way to look at this situation because why would Jagmeet Singh be so uh willing to
00:10:32.840 label the government he's propping up as genocide yeah I mean I I think this is a very real issue
00:10:38.600 and I think it's a very tragic issue and what's happened in Canada with these indigenous women 1.00
00:10:42.760 what's happened with the range of indigenous uh women and girls that have gone missing that have
00:10:46.680 been killed is absolutely horrific but you cheapen these things when you start trying to score political
00:10:52.760 points on them which is what happens when Justin Trudeau gets up on stage and accuses his own
00:10:57.640 country his own government of perpetrating an ongoing genocide and then we'll when it comes to
00:11:03.400 accusing China of genocide it's well uh you know the word means it's tough to say no I mean who are we
00:11:09.320 to say it's like you called yourself the leader of a genocidal nation and and Jagmeet Singh same thing
00:11:15.160 you are propping up a genocidal government or are you just accusing Canadians of genocide like
00:11:21.080 here's my belief if you believe genocide is happening right now what are you doing about it
00:11:27.000 what does it say about you if you're sitting on your computer right now doing nothing and you
00:11:32.120 think genocide is taking place no it's you're exactly right Andrew it is a tragedy and instead
00:11:37.880 of doing anything about it it's not like it's not like we're seeing even the Canadian government
00:11:42.280 Justin Trudeau as you said labeled this a genocide as well it's not like we're seeing really the
00:11:46.840 Canadian government do much about it either uh let alone Jagmeet Singh who's propping up the government
00:11:51.400 so as you said you said it perfectly there they believe there's an ongoing genocide in this country
00:11:56.920 they have no willingness to actually call out a legitimate genocide that has taken place in China
00:12:02.040 yet they're not doing anything about it and they're just trying to use it to score political points it
00:12:06.520 is it's it's it's atrocious it's tragic it's disgusting really yet it's just supposed to be
00:12:12.840 accepted we can't just go around Andrew and call ourselves genocidal because if you're not going to do
00:12:17.800 anything about it if you're not going to actually address the root cause of the problem there was an article
00:12:21.480 in 2015 from the global mail which said 70 of these incidents are take are being are being
00:12:26.760 perpetrated by indigenous men so there's a real problem taking place we're not pinning the blame 1.00
00:12:31.080 on anybody but what we are saying is if there's a real problem going on if it is really a tragedy as
00:12:35.960 these politicians say it is which it obviously is then do something about it actually solve the
00:12:40.120 problem but don't just go around saying it's white supremacy it's it's misogyny it's genesis it's it's 0.97
00:12:45.000 racism it's atrocious it's completely ridiculous yeah you're basically just doing governance by the 0.99
00:12:50.760 ai machine that i wrote the toronto star column with it's uh ridiculous uh why don't you take this 0.95
00:12:55.880 next story which actually i think is also a contender for having written been written by an ai machine
00:13:00.760 most certainly andrew this is yet another example of some great surgery-like journalism here from the
00:13:05.560 ottawa citizen also a uh a taxpayer funded receiving a taxpayer uh receiving journalism outlet they wanted to
00:13:13.240 sort of expand their uh expand their pool of writers so what did they do andrew they took a
00:13:19.000 special column written by a mask get it written by a mask very clever stuff very very deep as the
00:13:26.600 kids say it's very meta very deep stuff and i'm just going to read to you some of these lines because
00:13:31.400 again this is just an excellent piece of journalism andrew really hitting the hitting hard and really
00:13:36.280 kind of going right at the issues here starts off with this now hang on just before we get into this
00:13:40.360 as i set the stage is this written by a n95 mask is it written by a cloth mask is it written by a
00:13:47.640 gas mask do you know any identifiable details about the author uh my my my first read on it andrew
00:13:54.680 is that it's one of those uh blue medical cloth masks on the 95 mass so it really it's not up to the
00:14:00.120 real standard it's not up to the standard one of the forgotten masks this is like yesterday's
00:14:03.560 downtrodden mask completely completely terrible terrible as dr tam says it's not one of those
00:14:08.840 well-fitting medical masks it's just one of those blue random masks uh and he's feeling this mask
00:14:14.760 is feeling really left behind because did you just misgender the mask by the way do you did it tell you
00:14:19.720 it was a male no it didn't i don't think i did i don't think i did misgender it but if i did i i have
00:14:24.840 to well it could be a she i don't know if it's a he mask come on harrison be woke well i'm being safe
00:14:29.720 and i'm gonna go with they how about that we'll start with they they them is always good right right it's
00:14:34.600 just it's just a mask so we'll go with they for it and and and the the mask starts off with this
00:14:40.600 it's me your mask i'm here in between the cushions of your couch or maybe i'm under the bed it's difficult
00:14:46.040 to tell it's so dark wow just just wonderful wonderful way to start off and then it goes
00:14:50.840 on and there's some just there's some incredible incredible lines here as people continued to get
00:14:55.080 sick and die we got over that and pretty soon you wouldn't go anywhere without me we lined up
00:14:59.320 together at stores you showed me off at work we were very close very close i felt you every time
00:15:04.840 you smiled it's kind of creepy and as autumn rolled into winter you remarked more than once how i felt
00:15:10.520 a nice warm scarf a nice warm safe scarf andrew that's that's very important it wasn't just a warm
00:15:17.240 scarf it was a safe scarf around your mouth very good stuff and then of course they had to kind of the
00:15:22.600 mask sort of broke out it's it's it's medical knowledge because as we all know a very smart mask here
00:15:27.560 remember that bmj formerly british medical journal analysis last november more than 70 studies
00:15:33.960 worldwide looking at public health measures it said mask wearing accounted for a 53 reduction
00:15:39.080 in the in the incidents of covet 19 we were doing good work you and i not you know i mean 50 of them
00:15:45.000 didn't 50 of them didn't work but i guess 50 of them did work so there you go good work and also it
00:15:50.680 gets political the mask gets a little political when ontario premier doug ford said we've got to move on
00:15:56.600 that was all you needed it was the final straw without even a last kiss goodbye you discarded
00:16:01.880 me as quickly as andy threw woody into his pile of ignored toys once buzz arrived oh andrew it's a
00:16:07.960 love story between a mask and a forgotten friend a forgotten a forgotten lover in the mask just
00:16:13.480 pretty pretty mouthy mask by the way i know right i mean where does a mask get off thinking it's so
00:16:17.960 special it's just uh just a regular blue mask but look this is the kind of stuff you get when the
00:16:22.840 taxpayers fund your journalism this is the kind of quality stuff you get and i don't even know if
00:16:27.160 our ai bought friend would be able to pull up pull off something as as incredible as this andrew
00:16:32.840 yeah i wonder if like the mask is a recipient of the local journalism initiative funding or something
00:16:38.200 if the mask was if the mask was subsidized maybe this was an advertorial by the public health agency
00:16:43.000 of canada you never know well if it's not then we do have the independent press gallery to back up the
00:16:47.720 mask too if yeah a mask i will have to check if a mask has applied for accreditation with the ipg i
00:16:53.400 don't know if that's uh i don't know if we can allow a mask in well we'll have to leave that up to uh
00:16:59.240 to the experts so we'll leave that up to you guys andrew but i gotta say i mean like i said this is the
00:17:04.680 kind of stuff that that with with probably without taxpayer funding you probably would never get this is
00:17:09.640 this is a perfect example of why this sort of stuff in the ottawa citizen is very important uh
00:17:15.480 they do end up telling us who might be behind the mask at the end of the story uh the guy's name i
00:17:21.320 hate to burst our bubble here but it turns out the guy the guy might be named bruce diechman uh but
00:17:26.760 i wouldn't be bragging about that if i were you bruce no no exactly but nonetheless he well he didn't
00:17:32.840 he didn't put his name in the byline he only put it at the very bottom i wonder how many people
00:17:35.960 actually got to the bottom of that article yeah he kept up the illusion until the uh until the
00:17:40.120 bitter end all right uh uh do we have time for one more right because this one this was your baby you
00:17:45.800 wanted to do this one most certainly yet yet another example andrew of great surgery like precision when
00:17:51.720 it comes to journalism we're tackling the real issues here this is from the washington post just
00:17:56.360 take a look at this headline here shark week lacks diversity over represents men named mike scientists
00:18:03.640 say so you know these are the real issues here when the washington post is not going after
00:18:07.960 systemic racism when the washington post is not tracking down donald trump's nefarious activities
00:18:12.760 their russian connection all of that nasty stuff they're going after the shark week discovery channels 0.98
00:18:18.680 lack of diversity no joke here researchers say discoveries programming overwhelmingly featured white men
00:18:24.840 as experts while emphasizing this is a real important part here they they hid this in the headline
00:18:29.720 andrew while overemphasizing negative messages about sharks so we're being too nasty to the great
00:18:36.120 white shark we're being we're being too preferential to scientists named mike and we're being too preferential
00:18:41.640 to experts who are white males now i can absolutely understand that this is the kind of stuff jeff bezos
00:18:47.960 was hoping to uncover when he bought the washington post you know you're probably looking to get maybe
00:18:52.440 some favorable headlines for amazon but also tackling the real issues a lack of diversity on shark week
00:18:58.360 uh again let me just go back to the original point which we which we touched on at the beginning
00:19:02.760 these journalists here who are such experts who are such giants in the field andrew with us at true
00:19:07.480 north we can never reach these heights the journalist who wrote this is a stanford graduate you know
00:19:12.280 really absolutely hard-hitting stuff i i'm i it's almost it's humbling to me to read something like
00:19:18.440 this and realize i'm not even close i i maybe i missed something here are the sharks named mike like
00:19:25.800 where are all the mics coming from in shark week the mics are the white scientists on the show so 0.97
00:19:32.920 they did they did this really hard-hitting analysis stuff here they did some they did some research so
00:19:37.480 there are too many marine biologists named mike that's the complaint that's exactly it that's exactly
00:19:42.520 it so from 1988 to 2020 in a study which was completed uh by the public library of science which i think
00:19:50.200 just included watching tv uh watching endless hours of shark week content which you know is
00:19:55.880 actually a good way of getting uh of getting some grants you can you pitch something you pitch some
00:19:59.960 insane stories saying we're gonna we're gonna track down the lack of diversity on shark week and really
00:20:04.200 all you get to do is just watch tv for hours and hours on end it turns out that actually there's too
00:20:08.840 many white mike men white men named mike on the program and not enough black women and all of all of the
00:20:16.520 mike content on shark week is is nasty towards shark we're not we're not portraying sharks andrew as
00:20:21.720 these great beings of uh of oceanic art you know we're painting them as nasty scary creatures in the
00:20:29.320 depths of the oceans the the the study author's name is dave how dare you take aim at over representing
00:20:35.880 mics when your name is dave i i know andrew they uh he's like that's like the that's like one step
00:20:41.400 short of john smith and he's like oh we have too many mics here it's like dave supremacy is uh
00:20:46.360 coming to roost here my goodness even better andrew there's another study in that they sort
00:20:51.000 they source in this article and then the last name of the person who's who created this other study
00:20:56.760 his last name is white neck hey the guy's last name is white does he have a knack for being white is
00:21:04.440 that the is that is this like a big display of white shark great white privilege i don't know yeah so it's
00:21:09.800 it's it's lisa white neck and dave who are talking who are doing this deep hard-hitting analysis
00:21:16.280 on the on too many mics too many white men talking too many nasty things about sharks
00:21:21.800 i'm out i'm just doing the i'm getting the ai thing to do the show next week so yeah how about
00:21:26.040 it uh this has been another edition of fake news friday harrison faulkner you can catch him at ratioed
00:21:32.760 and you can catch me at the andrew lawton show and you can catch all of our colleagues at tnc.news
00:21:38.600 where i hope you can chip in a few bucks for the stellar news that you can't live without that you only
00:21:43.880 get here on fake news friday about you know white sharks named mike or whatever i don't know uh
00:21:49.320 donate i'm not selling it donate.tnc news support support our journalism uh have a great weekend
00:21:54.680 great weekend everyone
00:22:04.120 you
00:22:16.120 you